Matchsticks
by LegalBlonde
Summary: JI. Post-Telling. "She thinks of him when she strikes the match: the brief flare that settles down into nothing."


Spoilers: Through "The Telling"  
Rating: PG-13  
Disclaimer: JJ's, Bad Robot's, not mine. Student. Poor.

Archive:  Cover Me, anybody else just say pretty please  
AN: This bit of insanity was conceived in less than 24 hours with my hyperactive muse, and without the skills of my invaluable beta. You're warned.   
AN2: Been wondering what Jack and Irina were doing for those two years? Me, too. 1/1.  
  
--------  
  
The night they told her Sydney died, she spent a whole book of matches this way: striking one and watching it flare, then burn down, holding it until it was extinguished between her bare fingers. She decided she deserved just this one eccentricity.   
  
She thinks of him when she strikes the match: the brief flare, the bright flame that settles down into nothing: into what it is meant to be. Between the games, the aliases and the facades, her husband and daughter have left her with only these brief moments, like matchsticks, all they really have to call their own.   
  
Her fingers were still reddened and burnt when she ran them through the sand in his windowbox. She had to see him at work, in the act of grieving -- to know if he believed it. She stood just outside his window; he sat, hunched over and oblivious, on his couch. His forehead bent close to the stacks of paperwork and files and photos on the coffee table, shirtsleeves pushed up, elbows driving into his knees. He paced back and forth, talking in sharp bursts into a new cell phone, certainly off the books.   
  
She smiled: he did not believe.   
  
The flowerbox hangs on his windowsill like a malformed appendage, obscured by an overgrown crepe myrtle, both no doubt the remnants of a previous owner. It's painted in peeling azure with a vine motif in kelly green, almost faded away, and out of its pale sand sprout the dry, gray skeletons of daffodils. She crouches down behind it, hidden in the scant shadow of the low crepe myrtle, and creeps away with the dawn. She wants to go inside, to grip his arms in her hands so tightly her knuckles turn white and tell him he is right, to assure him. To assure herself. But she knows all the reasons why this is the wrong step, even now, and so she settles with clearing out the dead daffodils and trailing her fingers through the sand in the window-box, leaving him only handprints.   
  
--------  
  
She climbs a tree on the day of the memorial. She sits, long hours cramping limbs, a grown woman stuck in a makeshift treehouse. They post lookouts, they know she will come, but she comes anyway, because some things cannot be left behind. She watches the agents stream in, all dressed in black, some weeping while others stand stoic and still. Most of all she watches him – black suit in the front row, knees angled toward a marker too small for a real grave. His expression is fixed, his back is straight, but not rigid. He does not believe, so he does not weep.  
  
As the others stand up and the crowd thins out, some gather near him, shaking hands or squeezing arms or even patting him on the back – comfort offered at arms' length. It's a small crowd, far smaller than the one surrounding Vaughn; she catches only a glimpse of his haggard face and decides she will not look at him again.   
  
Jack glances toward the trees, toward her: he knows. Knows she cannot stay away, knows she is watching, knows she will not leave. As the last mourners trail down to the street, he remains; no one is willing to challenge him in this. He stands straight, head dipping down, bent over the marker for a moment, then he strides toward the trees. She slips down, branch by branch, twigs sticking in her hair, bark driving into her palms. She drops to the ground just a few feet from where he stands, at the edge of the trees. When he speaks, only his jaw moves.  
  
"Keep me updated on what you find."   
  
She nods. "I will. Good luck."   
  
He nods, a curt, quick gesture, jaw still set. "Yes. Thank you."   
  
It's a non-sequiter, but she will take what he can give. He turns stiffly, on one heel, and walks away.   
  
She crouches in the shadows of the trees until long after dark, until the last of the lookouts is gone, until even her best night-vision and eavesdropping devices pick up nothing but crickets and cicadas. She slips over to the marker, bending down for just a moment, long enough to pluck a single daffodil from a bouquet.   
  
She leaves it in his window-box, thrusting it deeply into the sand, pushing the tiny grains up around it until it stands upright, her finger-trails still showing at its base.  
  
-------  
  
She finds the daffodil ten days later, when she breaks into his house on a Tuesday afternoon -- such things must be done. She sorts and sifts through all his evidence, checks all of his contacts, one by one. She spots the daffodil, wilted on the kitchen counter, still half-submerged in a glass of water. She throws it in the garbage, and smooths the finger-trails in the sand as she leaves.  
  
She draws a question mark in the sand when she returns, two weeks later, and another one a month after that. By the fourth month, she tires of question marks, and for a moment draws a teardrop. But she fears this might send him the wrong message, and so she smooths the sand and draws only a small, meaningless circle.   
  
One night, when she comes too early and sees him drinking alone, she draws a short, bowed line, like their daughter's smile. The next time, draws a square. Then, when she finally finds news, she draws an exclamation point, burying documents beneath it in the shallow sand. They contain nothing more than hints, fragments of knowledge, but hints are hope, and so she leaves them for him.   
  
Then it happens. An Echelon intercept on a Thursday, a tapped phone, the message she has been waiting for, the one she thought she would never hear. Her daughter's voice, a codename, and a location. Location! She's on a plane as soon as it can be fueled, in Hong Kong even before the CIA.   
  
Then she waits. There's no way in, no way to know until they know, no way to breach security without risking both their lives.   
  
He finds her on the beach, alone; it is late. He sits beside her in his suit, sand sifting into his pockets and all their creases and folds. It pours into the shoes he's never taken off. She sits with her chin on her knees, arms clamped around herself; he sits with both palms flat on the sand, and he draws one hand back, fingers forming harsh, straight furrows, like claw marks in the sand. She grips his hand. _Stop._ Her fingers are cold, like steel, her grip tight, like a vise. She keeps her hand clamped on top of his, fingertips digging into his knuckles. He does not try to move.   
  
Their hands do not intertwine, like lovers'; he keeps his palm flat on the sand and her fingernails break his skin. They sit this way until he leaves, at first light, when the tide rolls in. The sand trickles from his jacket as he walks away, her finger-impressions still white on his skin.  
  
------  
  
He finds her there the following night, forearms resting on her knees, hands dangling, hair lifting off her shoulders in the light breeze. The tear-tracks still shine on her cheeks, and she sits with her shoulders rocked back, as if the damp sand were an easy chair. He sits beside her, but does not say a word; he knows she has seen what he has seen, heard what he has heard. He places his palm flat on the sand, drawing his fingers lightly back, leaving trails like tiny windswept dunes. She places her hand over his, her touch light, fingers warm. She curls his fingers back, one by one, leaving only his index finger, which she guides in light lines through the sand. She forms one curve, then connects it to another: an S. _Sydney_. She glances over, using just the corner of her eye, and sees the corners of his mouth pull up, the gesture creaky and crooked from disuse. She guides his hand again, drawing another S, and then another and another, covering the little expanse between them with dozens of connected curves. _Sydney. Sydney. Sydney. Sydney. Sydney._ They pause, for a moment, hands at rest on the still-warm sand. He draws their hands across, a straight line, an emphasis. _Sydney!_ Then she draws a little bowed line, and its inverse, connected. _Heart._ She regrets it immediately – the gesture was silly, juvenile.   
  
He reaches across with his free hand, lightly gripping her jaw, and his fingertips sear her skin like matchsticks. Then he turns her face toward his, and she cannot mistake the look in his eyes. He draws first her face, and then her body, to his.   
  
Two hands rest in the sand, fingers intertwined, like lovers. They draw across the sand in odd lines and light circles, their meaning forgotten for the moment. Then the hands press down, deep indentions in the sand, bearing the weight of two bodies.  
  
They leave at first light, when the tide rolls in. The waves rinse over prints in the sand, left by a body, or perhaps two bodies intertwined. They rinse away the print of a hand – perhaps it, too, was two hands, intertwined, fingers pressing deep into the sand, then drawing light lines back behind them. The warm water pools into the prints, softening their edges, leaving shapes like five matchsticks scattered on the sand. 


End file.
